Dancing without a partner
Why conservatives feel threatened by the illiberal left
If you want to understand the current fractures in the conservative movement, you should watch the Sept. 5 debate at the Catholic University of America in Washington between Sohrab Ahmari, the op-ed editor of the New York Post, and David French, a writer for National Review.
The debate sprang from an essay, “Against David French-ism,” that Mr. Ahmari published in May. Mr. Ahmari attacked a style of politics he attributed to Mr. French as too focused on procedural niceties and compromise, rather than protecting civilization from its enemies. Mr. Ahmari wants to use the power of the state against the left, in the way that the power of nonstate institutions is now leveraged against the right.
Mr. French, though personally a social conservative, made the classical liberal argument that any powers the right grants itself will eventually be deployed against it by the left. He wants a negotiated peace that would carve out space in American life for both religious liberty and secular progressive values.
There is little question that Mr. French won the debate; he was better prepared, with a better grasp of the mechanics of policy.
Yet even agenda-less Ahmari-ism galvanizes many social conservatives. Mr. Ahmari highlights the thing they most fear: the relentless leftward shift of virtually every culturally powerful institution, increasingly including corporations. These social conservatives believe the left will use that cultural and economic power to proselytize their children for a sort of hypersexualized secular faith — and to cleanse the resisters from both the public square and the economic mainstream.
Those fears are often exaggerated, yet not utterly unfounded. If you’d told me 10 years ago that same-sex marriage meant evangelical Christian bakers might be legally required to cater gay weddings, I would have rolled my eyes at such hysterical conservative propaganda. Post-Obergefell v. Hodges, the default left-wing position seems to be that you cannot shun gay weddings and continue to own a bakery, or work as a tech CEO.
So it’s not unreasonable for social conservatives to worry about a future in which nurses are told to supervise abortions or stop being nurses, doctors are forced to refer patients for abortion or euthanasia, and religious schools are told to give up either the religion or the school.
You can believe that French-ism is superior to Ahmari-ism in principle and practice, while also recognizing its dependence on a good-faith negotiating partner. For the center-right to hammer out a peace the religious right can live with, it needs a counterpart on the left that can stand up to its illiberal flanks and deliver a deal.
Today, that portion of the centerleft is small and quiet. The large remainder too often goes along with the illiberals — either loudly out of conviction or quietly out of fear. As long as that’s true, and as long as left-wing hegemony persists over key economic and cultural institutions, many social conservatives will understandably view Mr. French’s procedural liberalism as a guide to losing gracefully.
A principled argument can be made that conservative Christians should be prepared for just such a loss, rather than trying to force what is now a minority opinion on the emerging secular majority.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to argue persuasively that should abandon the benefits of mainstream life in defending their convictions. Not when that argument just happens to be the one that will best endear to the emerging powers that be. Procedural liberals will ultimately be forced into a tactical argument: Given declining religiosity, if you make it “us” or “them,” “them” will probably carry the day.
Even more unfortunately, no one ever won hearts and minds by pointing out the best way to lose, no matter how empirically or logically impeccable the arguments for surrender. If we procedural liberals can’t bring our left-wing counterparts to the negotiating table, the future of the right probably belongs to a muscular populism that can hold out hope for social conservatives. Even if it’s a false one.